Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Lime Macarons

Method:1. Put ground almond, icing sugar in a food processor or a small blender. Blend them finely.

2. Sift the blended mixture and set aside

3. With an electric beater, Beat the egg white, start from low speed and increase slowly to maximum speed. Beat until frothy (you will see lots of fine bubbles)

4. Now it's the time to add in the castor sugar, add half of the sugar, continue to beat in maximum speed for around 2 minutes, add in the other half, continue until you get very stiff peak.

5. Mix the dry ingredients into the egg whites. This process is called Macaronage. Start folding with a rubber spatula. Mix just until you roughly incorporate the mixture.

6. In another bowl scoop out 1 table spoon of the batter, fold until the consistency of the lava is obtained. Set aside (Used to draw white lines on macaron)

7. Add the lime green colouring powder to the rest of the batter. Continue to mix until you obtain a smooth shiny batter that flows like magma.

8. When you get smooth shiny mixture, stop folding, lift the mixture with spatula, if the mixture falls back slowly in the bowl means you're good to go. You could also check if the lines formed from the lifted mixture, they should slowly disappear in within 30 seconds. At this stage you're good to go. Do not over fold, it will be too liquid and becoming very hard to pipe.if you're unsure, you could refer to my basic macaron recipe as a guide HERE

9. Pipe the macarons.

10. When finish piping the macarons, I use one chopstick and dip into the plain white batter, with a help of a spatula to push it down, I slowly draw over the piped macaron.

11. When all macarons are drawn with white lines, hit the bottom of the baking tray, so that the white colour will 'sink' into the green.

Before hitting the baking tray. The white batter is kinda 'pop' up

After, they kinda sync together with the green mixture

12. Let your macarons sit for about 30minutes. This will depend on the humidity in your house and the day. Try touching the macaron softly, after 30mins. it should not stick to your hand.

13. Heat your oven to 150 C on the (heating on the top only). When the oven is ready, put your macaron at the very bottom shelf. Bake for 12 minutes, check them in the mid time of 6 minutes, the feets should already start forming. Turn the baking tray to the opposite direction to allow even baking. When the 6 mins is up, change the heating setting of your oven to Bottom only. This will help cooking the macaron and rise the feet more. Bake for another 6 minutes. You can test if the macaron is cook, touch softly on the shell and when the macaron doesn't slide on the feet, it's cooked. if it's not add another 1 mins each time and check.

(This is the method i found the best that works for me after few trial and error. I baked with heating the oven top and bottom and i had crack macarons. Having said that, every oven is slightly different than another, so please adjust accordingly)

14. Let the macaron cool down before removing them. You could wet your working area and slide the baking sheet on it to speed up the cooling process, but do not let it sit there too long, if not the macarons will become soggy. Other wise you can leave them cool at room temperature and remove them.

For the Lime White Choco Ganache

Ingredients

10g lime juicezest from half lime50g white cooking chocolate

Methods

1. Warm the lime juice over the stove, until it boil very slightly.

4. Remove from heat, add white chocolate, mix until the chocolate is melted completely and a smooth texture is obtain.

5. Add in the zest, mix thoroughly. Set aside in room temperature for 1 hour.

6. When the ganache is ready (not too runny, not too hard), pipe it on the macaron shell, close with another macaron shell.

7. After finish piping all the macarons, pop them in an air tight container. Leave them in refrigerator overnight. You could keep the macarons up to 48 hours in the frige. if not consumed, freeze them up. Because after 48 hours they will lose the texture.

Hi KimLove you blog I have found, looking forward to recieving the reg emails. I am a Cookier at www.cookiequeenkitschn.blogspot.com but as I have been asked to make over 200 macarons for a wedding and Im currently perfecting the art all I can think of is flavour combinations.... think I may be developing a fetish!